It is known to make caskets for the final disposal of human remains by scoring and cutting a flat blank of corrugated fiberboard and then folding it up to form a casket body for receiving the corpse. Such caskets and methods for making them are disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,967,455, issued Nov. 6, 1990 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,773,134, issued Sep. 27, 1988. In such caskets the casket body itself is preferably covered interiorly with a liner, and its exterior is provided with a decorative covering. To provide requisite strength and rigidity, such a corrugated fiberboard inner box is usually provided with rigid framing members, which may be of wood or wood substitute material, usually extending around the outside of the inner box, near its bottom and near its top, and appropriately secured thereto; these framing stripes are customarily placed on the outside of the casket, and finished attractively to add to the pleasing appearance of the casket. A decorative covering of the inner box is required for commercial purposes, since a plain corrugated fiberboard inner box is normally not sufficiently attractive to be saleable. In some cases the inner box and/or the truss for the casket lid may be of particle board, for example, or other light-weight foldable material.
To enhance the external appearance of the casket box, the decorative outer covering may be provided by applying paint or a paint-like material to the exterior, or by papering it with a material similar to ordinary thin wallpaper. The principal difficulty with such an approach is that the applied covering tends to follow closely unavoidable irregularities in the exterior surface of the corrugated fiberboard box, which then "show through" and do not present the desired perfectly smooth exterior appearance. In addition, the inner box itself typically has edges which are rounded due to the inherent properties of the box material when folded, and hence does not present as sharp and angular a profile at its edges as is desired from the aesthetic viewpoint; paint or thin paper does not hide this. Furthermore, ordinary decorative paper applied to the usual corrugated fiberboard inner casket box has been found to have a tendency to split when applied to the casket, especially where it is wrapped around the edges of the box.
Accordingly, it has been common in the past to utilize as an exterior covering a relatively thick pliable material such as a heavy cloth or flexible non-woven synthetic material, preferably cemented to the exterior of the inner box and of a thickness sufficient to disguise irregularities of the outer surface of the inner box and present a reasonably smooth exterior appearance. However, from a commercial viewpoint even such a covering suffers in that its appearance is not pleasing to all persons. For example, many persons will find a smooth wood casket, or a smooth metal casket, especially with sharply-angled edges, to be much more attractive and desirable. The difficulty is that the latter type of caskets are quite expensive, and hence not readily affordable for certain purposes where high expense cannot be tolerated.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/965,911 of B. E. Elder and S. D. Woedl, filed Oct. 23, 1992 and of common assignee herewith, discloses and claims a casket structure using a corrugated fiberboard inner box which nevertheless presents the smooth, expensive-looking exterior appearance of a high gloss plastic or metal casket. This is accomplished, in essence, by forming thin panels of plastic or metal that are pre-shaped to conform closely to the outer surfaces of the inner box including the usual framing strips on its exterior; this self-supporting cladding is bolted onto the exterior of the underlying corrugated fiberboard box, the combination then being sufficiently strong for its intended purposes and presenting the appearance of a much more expensive casket.
A drawback of the latter type of casket structure is that it is, in the case of plastic materials, best made by molding or thermal forming processes which by their nature are rather critical and rather expensive to perform. If instead of molding, one were to attempt to make such a plastic or metal cladding by simple inexpensive bending processes, there would be the danger of stretching or damaging the material, particularly at corners and edges, thereby producing substantial marring of the appearance of the finished casket.
What is desired for many purposes is a casket structure utilizing a light-weight, inexpensive inner box which, nevertheless, presents at its outer surface an appearance comparable to that of a more expensive casket, for example presenting a wood-grain appearance or a smooth plastic or metal appearance, preferably with sharply-defined angles at its edges, but which nevertheless is easy and inexpensive to manufacture.